Mormon Sacred Cows

In many Indian states, cows are literally sacred. They are not to be slaughtered, and Hindus do not eat beef. Cows support human life. People drink their milk and eat curds and butter. Cow manure is dried into patties that are used as fuel and insulation. Cows are used to plow the fields. Because of these gifts to humanity, cows are revered and protected, even when they are past their age of usefulness and can no longer provide sustenance. Because poor families cannot afford to keep a cow that no longer provides benefit to them, many older cows wander the streets freely in India; even in the cities it is common to see their chalky bodies wandering between cars in heavy traffic. Where prohibited, cow slaughter can result in a 7 year jail term.

When we talk about “sacred cows,” we generally mean shared assumptions or values or beliefs that are so deeply held that they are generally unquestioned and even discussing them may be taboo. Political correctness could be seen as a sacred cow in the United States. Any business also has some assumptions or values that it is political suicide to question. For example, sub-prime lending at a premium credit company like American Express would generally be considered off limits. All religions certainly have ideas that are not allowed to be questioned. These are our sacred cows. While any change can be viewed with suspicion by the old guard, some changes are considered more fundamental and threatening.

And yet, according to my good friend who is from Bombay [1] a new trend is occurring in India. Cows are disappearing at night, and beef clubs are springing up to provide meat to those Indians who don’t abstain for religious reasons and want access to this source of protein. “There are an estimated 30,000 illegal, unlicensed slaughterhouses in India,” said Poorva Joshipura, CEO of the animal welfare group PETA’s headquarters in India.

Why has this happened?

While Hindus do not eat beef, there are other populations in India that do: Muslims, Christians, and Scheduled tribes and castes. There are also claims that Hindus originally used to eat beef [2]. According to Professor Dwijendra Narayan Jha, a historian and author of the book, theMyth of the Holy Cow, “There is no doubt that beef remained an important part of the Indian haute cuisine and cow was often killed in honour of guests. It is totally baseless to argue that Hindus never ate the flesh of the cow.” Professor Jhu states he has received death threats for making this claim. Talk about a sacred cow!

Conservatives in India point to three additional factors for these changes:

Secularism. Hinduism has long influenced Indian politics, so moving away from Hindu values represents a separation of religion and state.

Global exposure. While India has been an economic winner due to globalisation, that’s a two-way street that also includes exposure to new ideas and values, as well as international integration.

Necessity. Indigenous farmers are too poor to care for cows indefinitely once those cows are no longer able to provide milk, which is why the cows are often left to roam free in traffic, but the same poverty motivates them to sell the highly coveted beef to illegal slaughterhouses or to export these cows to states or nations where slaughter is legal. [3]

Of course, these are the same root causes conservatives always point to when their dominance and political power begins to wane or any organization whose values are challenged by changing attitudes. Which made me wonder, what are the sacred cows of Mormonism, the assumptions that we don’t allow to be questioned. There are several things that, while there is a clear stance on them, there is still room for questioning within the church:

Word of Wisdom

Interfaith marriage

Extramarital sex

Tithing

What are the topics that are so verboten in most Mormon congregations that they are viewed as completely disruptive and not up for question? I think the following most closely fit the bill today, at least in some wards:

Female ordination; while it is sometimes OK to discuss it, based on statements made at General Conference, our top leaders certainly prohibit this idea as completely out of bounds and not up for discussion

Gay marriage (in some wards, and at BYU)

Scriptural literalism, particularly the Book of Mormon

Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling & the restoration

Prophetic infallibility – inability to lead the church astray

Questioning the Proclamation on the Family

Abortion

Politics that aren’t conservative

Of course, the things that will erode this prohibition are similar to those at play in India: secularism (people living outside the MorCor bubble where Mormonism is a minority faith), interfaith influences as converts join, and simple necessity as more information is available on-line and groups discuss things more openly. And yet, there is a big difference between making cows sacred in India where minority faiths don’t prohibit eating beef, and simply being unwilling to discuss topics that make people uncomfortable.

Hence, the bloggernacle, the In & Out Burger of Mormon discussions. If the bloggernacle didn’t exist, we would have to invent it because of the mantra so well expressed in the musical 1776:

“I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about.”

And of course, they were discussing the most sacred cow of all, revolution. It’s a dangerous topic because failed revolution is treason, which goes to the heart of why something is a sacred cow: because it crosses the line (for some) into disloyalty or treason. It is viewed as going against the very principles of the organization that make it unique. It stirs emotions such as fear and even disgust in the hearts of those whose beloved status quo is under fire.

What chalky bodies wander through your ward’s traffic? What topics are off limits or considered too dangerous or uncomfortable to discuss?

Discuss.

[1] He objected to my calling him a Mumbaiker, because the city he grew up in was called Bombay (a Colonial name, possibly a mispronunciation of Mumbai) until 1995 when it was changed (some say reverted) to Mumbai for political reasons. This argument is still important to those who live in or are from this important port city.

[2] Not unlike observations about early Mormon Word of Wisdom observance compared to inaccurate traditional stories we were told while young.

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Published by hawkgrrrl

Hawkgrrrl has been blogging since March 2008, publishing hundreds of opinion pieces. She is a wife and mother of three, a business executive, a returned missionary, and is active in her LDS ward. She likes oil painting, reading, theater, and international travel.
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32 thoughts on “Mormon Sacred Cows”

When I think of other people and their sacred cows, so to speak, I try to be mindful of the counsel in Romans chapter 14. I don’t want to put a stumbling block in front of a brother or sister. As Paul counseled there, even if he wants to eat beef, he won’t eat it if such might cause his brother or sister to stumble. I like that charitable approach.

Hawkgrrrl. Excellent article. I’ll just mention one – gay marriage. As the events and subsequent fallout of prop 8 filtered its way to Australia, many members and leaders would announce through talks etc that we “must” contact our local political representatives and express our opposition to gay marriage. I felt so uneasy at such a request, one which I never took up. I got fed up with it one day and had my say in HP. I indicated that whilst I had a particular spiritual view of homosexual behaviour, that as a citizen I held a differing view – and that was that it did not bother me in any way that such couples would want to get married. The expression of this disparity in position produced a different type of silence that is normally the case in the group!! The teacher did not know where to go and from memory the two comments that were made were (1) we should all love one another (my point exactly) and (2) that this would result in gay marriages being forced to be performed in temples (not going to happen). Everyone else looked on in disbelief. Ironically I think Elder Oaks is philosophically closer to my position than theirs now???

Isn’t the temple the biggest sacred cow in mormonism? The bloggernacle has broadened the discussion somewhat, such as talking about gender issues in the temple ceremonies and the temple’s relationship to Freemasonry, but there are clearly still lines that people are not willing to cross.

1. Questions we actually don’t know the answer to (i.e. if gender is so essential (as per the family proc.) to the experience of mortality, why do intersex people exist)
2. Questions we think we know the answer to, but upon further reflection realise that we don’t (i.e. handling theodicy)

If these questions are attempted to be discussed, they are often stymied with platitudes.

Nicely done. I think that the sacredness of cows depends in Mormonism, as it probably does in India, on how close you are to the centers and concentrations of power of the belief system (i.e., the larger and more powerful the Hindu presence, the more likely a prison sentence for the cheeseburger).

Although there are certainly Utahrd extremists in every ward out in the real world, I think that in my area, mercifully far from Happy Valley, positions on scriptural literalism, abortion, and conservative politics may not be as rigid as they might be elsewhere. By that I mean that we tend to be pretty orthodox on BoM historicity, but not insistent that every indigenous American is a descendant of Lehi, and I know relatively few Young-Earth Creationists; most members don’t regard abortion as equivalent to murder and anathema in all circumstances; and we have the usual Minnesota collection of Democrat statist control freaks as well as the Republican flavor. (Libertarian types like me are still pretty rare.)

I await with anticipation your post expanding on the “room for questioning” with regard to extramarital sex. 🙂 Personally, I think Heavenly Father might have more important things to worry about than what two consenting single adults do with themselves as long as no one else is hurt, but I’m not sure I’d ever say that out loud within a mile of my chapel.

Naomi, I believe that in both the cases you posit (intersex people and theodicy), there have been plausible, reasonable, Gospel-consistent hypotheses put forth that, through frequent repetition, have become platitudes. That is not to say that we have the answers, only to say that the platitudes we frequently hear were once credible when credibly discussed.

It is an unfortunate truth that many – perhaps most – people not only don’t think, but aren’t really even sure how to do it.

I think naomi is onto something. An example is that I raised the issue of intersex people in Gospel Doctrine once, and it got very uncomfortable, and people doubted that it’s a very common thing, but the other question that it raises is what is it that the Proc is calling eternal: biological sex, sexual identity or gender? The three terms are different, but the church seems to conflate all three. Certainly, of the 3, gender is the least universal and eternal.

Sacred Cows of Mormonism, defined as “formally disciplined for discussing or investigating”

1) The Divine Feminine
2) Situations when personal revelation trumps prophetic authority.
3) Origin and Changes in the Temple Ritual
4) Temple Clothing (until 2 months ago)
5) The dearth of revelation, or more accurately, the transition from revelation to official declaration to PR statement
6) Stipends for GAs and Mission Presidents
7) Polygamy in the next life/current theology

Through the years sacred cows change. Fortunately we very rarely hear about the evils of birth control or the heavy mandates to have large 6+ families. This use to be a staple of church life 30 years ago, and certainly were sacred cows until most members just quitely ignored them and did what worked best for their own families.

I have to differ with you, Grey Ghost, in finding reasonable, gospel-consistent hypotheses for things like intersex and theodicy, given the inconsistencies in doctrine and policy.

Perhaps ‘platitude’ was the wrong word though, maybe, I dunno, ‘terminal phrase’ is better. Stuff like ‘we don’t know some things; God will work it out in the next life’. To illustrate: the brethren believe in extreme cis-heteronormative genderising of mortality and eternity, and believe mortality to be a context to which the calibre of our eternal souls is developed. Maleness or femaleness is therefore represented as a pillar of God’s plan for his children. How does this account for intersex people? They’re not common, but there’s no small print to the church’s claim that God’s plan is for all God’s children. There are so many questions raised by the incongruity of intersex persons and the POS/H, which I won’t address here because I’m already thread-jacking hard, but the point is, the only ‘answer’ we have for this is that people maybe just have to do the best they can with the hand they’re dealt and have faith God will sort it in the next life. That’s an okay answer, apart from the vague afterlife answer is ruled in mortality by specific policy, i.e. say an intersex person is born and the parents choose to raise the person female, but during puberty it appears hormones are more wired to male physiological growth, and once that person reaches adulthood, if they choose to have surgery to physically align with their natural endocrinology and/or psyche, the church will bar them from the temple. That doesn’t seem like ‘we don’t know, do the best you can, God knows your heart’.

Anyway, because of this, I find it a completely iffy topic to raise in church, despite it being (in my mind) a very core issue in a church that stresses ‘gendered’ mortality to aggressively.

Hawk – did you read that Dialogue bit, ‘Toward a Post-Hetero Mormon Theology’, and Joseph Spencer’s response? I feel like some of this is addressed there. I absolutely believe that the brethren writing the FP believed their use of ‘gender’ was a reference to a combination of all the definitions you mentioned. I am unsure as to whether this was thoughtful and purposeful, or whether they were unaware that the semantics of their language was dodgy.

I’d add: where I am, suggesting that general conference talks are not scripture, and that the Fam Proc is not scripture. Taking issue with something said in a general conference talk.
Oh, and wondering aloud if heaven (CK) actually sounds like something you’d enjoy or not.

Speaking of “sacred cows” I always thought that the question of gay marriage was out. On my mission there was a Branch President who was married to a person who had been born a man but had a sex re-assignment operation. Neither of them have been kicked out of the church and the Branch President’s “wife” taught Relief Society. He/she slipped while giving the lesson and said when I was a young boy. OOps. Things that make you go hmmmm….

Hedgehog – thank you; I wasn’t aware of that, and, if my hogging this thread hasn’t already outed me, it’s an issue I have strong feelings about and interested in learning others’ perspectives.

Former Sheep – If I understand things correctly, you aren’t excommunicated for gender reassignment surgery, necessarily, but you are barred from temple ordinances.

I don’t want to be dramatic or offensive here, but I did just want to note that the quotation marks around the word ‘wife’ weren’t necessary in that situation. Also, if she identifies as a she, ‘he/she’ is also unnecessary. I get why this seems like awkward gender descriptivism to some, but I think it helps demonstrate empathy. In a much lesser form, it’d be like someone using finger-quotation-marks every time they used your name to address you.

Naomi, we’ve probably already jacked it and it’s interesting to both of us, so I’ll risk the Wrath of Hawk and expand a bit. 😉

You took slight issue with my statement on “reasonable, gospel-consistent hypotheses” and said There are so many questions raised by the incongruity of intersex persons and the POS/H, [. . .] the only ‘answer’ we have for this is that people maybe just have to do the best they can with the hand they’re dealt and have faith God will sort it in the next life.

It occurs to me that I wasn’t sufficiently clear, and there’s an important distinction here that’s just starting to get clear to me as well, although it should have been obvious to me as I contemplate the difference between the perfect Gospel and the imperfect and often-aggravating Church. So, I’ll try to clarify my thoughts a little, and I’d be interested in your take. I apologize in advance, because this is going to come off as stilted and pedantic, but I’m striving for some precision of language. 🙂

When I say (#7) that we have “plausible, reasonable, gospel-consistent hypotheses” for things like intersex people and theodicy, I mean that there are doctrinally-sound hypotheses as to why these things occur. (I also said, perhaps not clearly, that when those things get parroted without understanding or explanation, they become platitudes.)

So, for example, the idea that sex – male/femaleness – is an eternal, pre-existent condition is a possibility. [It seems to me that this is what the brethren are saying, although their language is not precise and they seem to believe that we all ought to act like it, then. Back to this in a bit.]

It’s also a possibility that our physical bodies, being less than perfect, occasionally come off the assembly line in a condition other than “standard.” Our flesh may not match our spirit, in short.

It’s further an additional possibility that we are psychologically wired, either ab initio or by our formative experiences or by our biological brain chemistry, to think of ourselves in ways that don’t match our spirits, or our bodies, or either.

In very short terms, that’s a “plausible, reasonable, gospel-consistent hypothesis” for the existence of intersex people, based on what we think we know through revelation about pre-existence, spirits, bodies, and the degeneration of physical matter. What it is not is a policy answer, and that’s a different cup of tea.

The policies are driven, first, by the norm – they cover the majority of the cases. Second, they tend to be driven by perspective and bias. If the policymakers can’t imagine being intersex, or transgender, or gay, they’re unlikely to figure out policies to cover those issues that don’t amount to some variation on “shut up and act normal, God will sort it out,” as you rightly point out.

So while we can probably doctrinally hypothesize about these things, we still lack policy insight. Even our doctrinal hypotheses turn into platitudes (that’s the right word): “Sometimes these things just happen in an imperfect world.” Well, what do we do about it? “Shut up and act normal, God will sort it out.” Cue sound of tearing hair, head pounding wall . . .

Overall I’d say the top “sacred cow” of LDS culture is the WoW. Going against the saw devised by the late Bruce R. McConkie in ‘Mormon Doctrine’…”The WoW is NOT the Gospel, nor is the Gospel the Wow”. While certainly a fairly well-defined list of prohibited items exists that serve as a criteria for determining one’s ‘standing’ in the Church (e.g., qualify to serve in official positions or get a TR), more than a few members are quite obsessed with whether things like chocolate, diet coke, energy drinks, etc. are going to get them “thrust down to Hell” (II Nephi 9:34). And not merely for themselves, often it goes in how they unfairly judge their fellow Saints. Even a few bishops (though thankfully few but not few enough) put their own spin when interviewing their charges rather than stick to the ‘script’.

Conversely, I’d say the ‘sacred cow’ of the ‘nay-sayer’ (or as the late Spiro Agnew coined it, “nattering nabobs of negativism”) is the Church’s support of Prop 8. Oh, how DARE the Church or its members oppose the desires of those that define themselves in terms of a certain sexual proclivity! It’s gotten to the point that for many, I’d say that their “god”, rather than our Heavenly Father, is their own carnal indulgences. Not unlike the way the Apostle Paul describes a group of like-minded souls back in his day: “Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Phillipians 3:19).

Finding political sacred cows is by comparison quite easy. Just follow the money. One’s ‘sacred cow’ is often the ox he doesn’t want to see gored.

Grey Ghost – I’ll allow it. I agree with you that this is a problem with the policy not having nuance and being inaccurate. To add, for those who fit “norms” and lack empathy, it may be disconcerting to have it pointed out that they don’t understand the intricacies involved. Just a few quick definitions:
– biological sex: physiological characteristics of one’s sex, including chromosomes, genitals, reproductive functions, and physical qualities like bone structure.
– gender identity: a person’s private sense and subjective experience of their being a man or woman.
– gender: the socially constructed characteristics usually associated with masculinity or femininity (e.g. girls like pink, do more housework, and earn less money; boys like blue, belch a lot, and don’t cry).

The Proclamation is definitely a conflation of the three. Is it gender or biology or identity that is eternal? What about when they aren’t all the same because sometimes they are not? The male/female characteristics in the Proc aren’t even universal, so how can they be eternal?

Even the narrow category of biological sex as defined by Hawkgrrrl in #20 isn’t as clear-cut as most people think it is. Physiology is dependent on how the body releases and responds to hormones, which may or may not match the chromosomal sex definition. There are other ways the biological sex of an individual can be pushed into gray areas, as medical professionals can attest.

As far as sacred cows go, the polygamy essays a couple months ago definitely exposed a big one. I definitely got the message that discussion among orthodox members is supposed to remain accepting and favorable towards the historical practice, regardless of personal feelings on the matter. I think it played into the larger sacred cow of prophet infallibility, though. I also agree that there is variation among different regions. Even individual wards can have traditions that turn into sacred cows.

Obviously making ad hominem attacks on your fellow saints is not a sacred cow, since the OP happily disposes of conservative thought in one easy back-handed swipe, commenters blithely describe their brothers and sisters as “Utahrd extremists,” etc.

You remind me of Clevenger’s comment about the Action Board:

Clevenger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding light. These three men who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility, and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls of Munich and everywhere else, were there men that hated him more.

Mark B: Please clarify where the backhanded swipe toward conservative thought occurs in the OP. I did not attack conservative thought; I merely pointed out that disagreeing with conservative politics in many wards is unwelcome as most members assume the church fits with conservative US politics.

#25 – I would consider most ‘political’ discussions unwelcome for their nature, not whether someone advocates a liberal or conserative viewpoint. Yea, there is SOME overlap, but one can be a good Mormon and a Democrat. One of the best members here in Northern CA is a friend of over 20 years (he joined the Church some 17 years ago) and he ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 2004. One of the FEW times that I voted for a Democrat, but this was voting for the man rather than his party. He had his reasons for running as a ‘donkey’ and I respect them.

I was subbing in Gospel Doctrine, and there was an out of town family visiting. The guy made a very audible Obama-related wise-crack in relation to something I had said, and you could hear my entire ward gasp because that kind of talk isn’t customary where I live. People are very careful to avoid partisan politics. However, I’ve certainly heard that kind of crack in other wards. I think the guy was really taken aback that people didn’t think it was cool to make that kind of joke.

I just moved from the East Coast to the West for a bit, and just this Sunday we had a ‘world’s going to hell’ talk wherein Obama was criticized (to a sea of nodding heads) and the somewhat ironic line ‘when I was young, ‘gay rights’ meant the right to be happy’ was trotted out to zero negative reaction. I would argue that there are certainly some spots in the US where conservative politics appears to be a common baseline.

#28 and Hawk: As you get closer to the East Coast, do ACTIVE LDS members tend to be more politically liberal? Though born in “Loozy-Anna” and spent my formative years in Florida, for all practical purposes I’m a “California Kid”. Wasn’t LDS until age 20, and even then not as interested in politics as now. So I wouldn’t have enough experience to say, but it would not necessarily surprise me to see more ‘liberals’ as you get away from the West. There are several members in my #2 son’s ward in Illinois who are union members at the local glass plant (one is a shop steward), and they’re Democrats enough that if they’d wear a tattoo, there’s be a donkey on the bicep.

As much disdain as I have for our CURRENT Chief Executive (and I so thank the late Robert Taft for ramrodding the 22nd Amendment back in the 40’s to stop the imperial reign of FDR et al…), I consider discussion of his (de)merits to be inappropriate for a Church meeting. Agreement or lack of same is not the question; the Church is SUPPOSED to be apolitical (and our political stridency like at least amuses or even irritates our non-US membership). Somehow methinks that if it really matters to Heavenly Father who wins a Presidential election, he can at least do what the late Richard Daley (“Vote early and often”) did back in 1960 for Kennedy.

I generally dislike political discussions in gospel doctrine class. Some of the gems I’ve heard included gushing praise for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how it was the Lord’s will that acts of genocide were committed against the Native Americans. Yikes!

Sacred Cow List
(or maybe just a partial list – I don’t know)
• Word of Wisdom
• Interfaith marriage
• Extramarital sex
• Tithing
What are the topics that are so verboten in most Mormon congregations that they are viewed as completely disruptive and not up for question? I think the following most closely fit the bill today, at least in some wards:
• Female ordination; while it is sometimes OK to discuss it, based on statements made at General Conference, our top leaders certainly prohibit this idea as completely out of bounds and not up for discussion
• Gay marriage (in some wards, and at BYU)
• Scriptural literalism, particularly the Book of Mormon
• Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling & the restoration
• Prophetic infallibility – inability to lead the church astray
• Questioning the Proclamation on the Family
• Abortion
• Politics that aren’t conservative
Sometimes I wonder about the Bloggernacle. It seems like most people in it need to find the true God, have him organize a church for them, get their own prophets, have those prophets write some scriptures for them, have those prophets give sermons that always make sense to all people everywhere. And why do they make sense to all people everywhere? Because true God leads the prophets and tells them how to say it in a way that all people everywhere will understand it. And since it’s coming from the prophets, everyone everywhere will just follow the prophets.
But then a strange thing happens. It seems like a lot of them try to change the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And then I ask myself – Why do they bother? And then I tell myself – Just because I know that Church is from God and that it is the only church that is from God, doesn’t mean they know that too. That helps but I still wonder.
I say that I know it is true, yet I have doctrinal issues with it. Once as a clerk in a bishopric meeting giving the spiritual thought I went through one of these doctrines in quite detail spewing venom as I went. Some of you may know what I mean. As I talked I wrote pictures on the chalk board to explain what I meant. I noticed that after I was done and for several weeks after that, what I had written on the chalk board in the Bishop’s office stayed on the board until after Ward Conference. I kind of got it through the grape vine that the Stake had considered it and came to the conclusion that it seemed like I was an all right guy so they didn’t press it any further. It was about this same time I remember going home from church one Sunday and with the words of a stake president in the past where he told us that in our prayers we should really talk to God and, essentially, not just ramble. I decided to take him up on it. I was very upset about some doctrinal discussion at church. I can’t remember what it was about. I went to a room by myself, knelt down and, as nearly as I can remember said the words, Heavenly Father, the only reason I go to church is because it’s the church of thy Son and that is the ONLY reason. Then I closed the prayer in the name of Jesus. As I walked away I had kind of a sobering feeling the prayer had been heard and noted.
So. To some of you, it seems like I should be complaining about how ignorant the leaders are. Let’s say that I’m right and they are wrong. What difference does that make? They are all something I will never be. They are all called and set apart to be apostles and prophets by the power of God. Oh, and whether you believe it or not, insurrection is not an option. If you don’t like something about them or the system all together, that’s too bad. You tough it out. With that in mind I suppose you can say goodbye to the perfect sermons.
This is the only church on earth that has the priesthood keys to perform essential priesthood ordinances. Leave the Church? For somebody who knows what I know, that’s not going to happen. And about that prayer I told you I said – that’s, also, not going to happen again. One of those is enough.
Bloggernacle!! Has God ever said anything to you? Maybe what we need is a bloggernacle testimony meeting. Non-members invited.

it is doctrinally unsound for Latter day Saints to support gay marriage. per lds theology only a man and a woman can live as husband and wife forever and ever who have been faithful in their covena
nts. latter-day saints who support gay marriage jeopardize their own exaltation